


Slouching Towards Bethlehem

by kitsunealyc



Category: Fairytale of New York (Song)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Gambling, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunealyc/pseuds/kitsunealyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was Christmas Eve in the drunk tank...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slouching Towards Bethlehem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gemjam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjam/gifts).



  
_Christmas Eve in the Drunk Tank_   


"O'Riordan. You're out."

O'Riordan stiffened and rolled away from the wall and onto his back. The old metal springs of the drunk-tank bunk creaked under him, several of them poking in reprimand. Between the groaning bed and Sullivan's jovial bark, his head was set to pounding again. His skin washed clammy as he fought his body's urge to spew whatever poison was left. Whiskey. _Uisge-beata._ Water of Life.

What a fucking lie that was. Nothing left him wishing for death more often than a bottle of Tullamore's rare old mountain dew.

"Rise and shine, my boy." The cop kicked the leg of the bunk-bed. O'Riordan groaned at the extra jarring and sat up, burying his face in his hands. Wasn't quite reading to give standing a try.

The old man in the bunk across from O'Riordan's snuffled in his sleep at the creak of metal. He'd drifted off somewhere in the middle of… fuck if O'Riordan could recall. _Mavourneen_ , or _Shall I Wanting_ , or one of those songs that make even young men seem old and mournful.

"Why aren't you giving him the boot?" Sullivan wasn't bad for a cop. Maybe he'd let O'Riordan sleep it off a bit longer if he puked on Sullivan's shoes.

"Busy night, Christmas Eve. You've got a home to go to. Joseph don't. So clean yourself up and go celebrate with the missus. Should be there anyways, 'stead of down at the pub."

Celebrate. That reminder pushed the nausea back into something he could swallow. He stood. Sullivan supported him until he could stop swaying.

"My ticket—"

"Is with the rest of your belongings, which you'll get soon as you can sign yourself out. Now go on with you. We need the space. Gonna be a busy one tonight."

Still leaning on Sullivan for support, O'Riordan staggered out of the cell block.

***

  
_They've Got Cars Big as Bars…_   


He first saw Cait at the Mummer's Parade down McLean, and her laughing and fighting off Captain Mummer with nothing but a bottle of whiskey and her own sharp tongue. The mummer had stolen her knit cap, and was taunting her with it in exchange for a tot from her bottle.

"Go on with you. I need them both to keep warm, don't I?" But she gave the old lecher a swig, and snatched her hat back as Miss Funny came along to push the Captain down the street to hassle other pretty girls.

 _'Here comes I Miss Funny.  
Money I want, and money I crave,  
And if I don't get money,  
I'll sweep yez all away to the grave.'_

The girl's breath hung in a frosted cloud as she pulled the cap back low over her brow and shivered. She fixed her hat in place with a cheap crown of silver plastic. The kind brides wore on their hen nights. The wind blew her breath away.

Her beauty stole O'Riordan's. He stamped his feet and pulled his coat closer about him. "It's no place for the old, yeah?"

She spun about, too quickly. Whiskey sloshed around in her bottle, but the level was too low for spilling. Her little plastic crown tilted on her head, and she raised a freckled hand to straighten it. Fucking queen of New York City with her crown and her bottle-scepter. Beautiful enough to be a queen of old Erin, with that hair and that skin and that sweet, rounded arse.

"Just off the boat, are you?" Her own Dublin accent had been flattened by the Bronx.

He kicked the pavement with workboots that had seen better days. "Yeah. Streets of gold my arse. Someone back home is going to pay if ever I get back."

A hooded mummer in horns poked them up onto the sidewalk with his plastic pitchfork:

 _'Here comes I Beelzebub.  
In under my arm I carry me club.  
In my hand a dripping pan.  
I think meself a jolly old man.  
If you don't believe in what I say,  
Enter in Prince George and he will clear the way.'_

O'Riordan slid his arm about the girl, just to make sure she stayed close. So smooth he was, when there was nothing to lose.

"And look at who's the fresh one." But she didn't wiggle away. Offered him a tot from her bottle. Tullamore's. He was a Finian Five man, himself, but you didn't argue when a pretty girl fed you whiskey.

"Can't a fellow be homesick?"

Prince George passed by – or they passed him. The girl was leading O'Riordan down a side street, the parade spilling along beside them, and him too besotted to care.

Another mummer followed the mad Prince, not one that had ever been seen back home in Antrim.

 _Here comes I Old Blue Eyes  
Fleeing a parcel of Queens' wise guys  
If you've money for me I'll sing you a song  
An' if it happens you don't, at least sing along'_

"Sinatra? Isn't he Italian? What's he doing in a mummer's parade?"

"His music's pure New York." She waved her bottle around, swayed against him, all soft, warm, womanly bits. "That's immortality. The only kind we have."

Every Irishman's a philosopher. "What about kids? Thought they were supposed to be our immortality."

"Fuck that." She pinched him, might have hit him if she'd had a spare hand. He grinned. He liked a girl with a bit of violence in her. "Don't live your life through your kids. Don't lay your dreams on someone else's shoulders. Fuck that. Build your own."

She took a last swig and threw her bottle at the gutter. It shattered like ice. Daddy issues, right there, but fuck it. Didn't everyone have them?

"Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams." He couldn't say where that came from. Maybe an Irish thing. Talk about dreams and fucking Yeats came out every orifice. It was genetic; Yeats was the father of Ireland's dreams, the wanker. Gave the whole country daddy issues.

Someone must have given the Sinatra mummer a few coins. He started warbling, and the crowd all around him right down to the bums in the stoops swayed and sang along with him. _Start spreading the news…_

Including whiskey-girl.

"Jesus, you've got a voice on you, though," O'Riordan said, hugging her a little closer.

"It's my immortality. If I can make it here, right?" She twisted in his arms. Her breath smelled of whiskey. He wanted another taste. Tullamore. Best damn whiskey in the world.

"All the way to Broadway, if that's what you want." He kissed her and fell in love in the shadow of St. Barnabas, as the bells rang out for Christmas day.

***  
 _You Promised Me Broadway_

When O'Riordan learned that Cait played guitar, he took the money he was meaning to put on the horses and bought her one from the pawn shop.

"Boxing Day present," he said when she protested. "Besides, you need something to go with that voice of yours."

"All the way to Broadway, yeah?" She strummed a few chords. Held the guitar high and safe when he toppled her back onto the bedding. Just them and a second-hand mattress and her tiny tenement studio round the corner from St. Barnabas. A nice place, if you didn't mind the bells waking you at all hours. Cait was warm and cozy, a ward against the cold world outside.

"Someday, you'll be a mummer character in a parade."

"Old Freckle-Fingers, they'll call me." She set the guitar aside – reverent as if it were a child – and rolled him over, tickling him with said fingers.

***  
 _You're a Bum, You're a Punk_

She said she wrote better on junk, and he never argued with her. It wasn't true, but she needed something to make her feel special, and Christ knew it wasn't him anymore. The least he could do was not crawl up her arse over the one thing that made her happy.

So he drank to ignore the loneliness, and she shot up to ignore everything else.

When they were both sober, it was good. He mourned the tunes played and lost because he was sometimes too slow to turn on his recording equipment when her 'just messing about' moved to something else. Something magic. Her music was raw and real, a marriage of old-world and new, wrapped up in the fury of youth and the fear of getting old, of being eternally inconsequential. A scream to make an impact, a big fuck you to an indifferent world.

Her art was a phoenix, burning itself to ash. She fed it with whisky, hash, and ever more caustic fuels. It made him sob the way beatings from his da never did. It put him in mind of Yeats.

He took the home-edited demos around to agents and producers. Most wouldn't listen, and those that did promised the moon and never followed-up. O'Riordan blamed himself. He couldn't capture her with a cheap cassette recorder and a microphone from the pawn shop. His fault that no-one else could hear her brilliance.

And sometimes, her fault.

"Turn that fucking thing off."

O'Riordan dodged the bottle Cait threw at him. It shattered on the stained wall of their one-room studio. Glass scattered across the grotty old mattress and rumpled blankets. He'd have to clean it up later, before she took another hit and collapsed on the bed. By then, Cait would be past caring.

"Watch where you're fucking throwing things, you stupid twat."

"I will. Next time, I won't miss."

He didn't dare hit her, much as he wanted to. She'd grown frail on the heroin, losing all her curves and padding until she was thin as the needles she stuck between her fingers and toes. Also, there was the guitar, cradled before her like a shield. The only thing of value they hadn't sold.

"Just play a little more." He left the recorder running, just in case.

"I can't. It's shite. It's all shite. Fuck it. Why do I even bother. You'll just turn it into worse shite."

O'Riordan's hands balled into fists at his sides. He swiped up a half-empty bottle of off-brand whiskey and left the apartment.

***

  
_Pray God It's Our Last_   


"You fucking _sold_ it?"

Cait stared up at him from the mattress, glassy-eyed still from an earlier hit.

"You stupid bint!" O'Riordan grabbed the tattered handles along the side of the mattress and flipped it up, rolling her off onto the needle-strewn floor. She squawked, skinny limbs splaying. He dumped the mattress on top of her. "We needed that fucking guitar."

"What the fuck are you on about?" She shoved out from under the mattress, struggling with the bedding as though it were something more complicated than cotton and down.

"I got you a gig. And not a pub gig, either. A real shot in a recording studio with a producer who knows what he's about and is willing to give an old junkie like you a chance anyways."

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. With her eyes wide and her scowl wiped away by surprise, she looked almost like the girl he'd kissed on Christmas Eve all those years ago.

"Maybe we could borrow—"

"Fuck it. Fuck you. I'm through wasting my time on this shite. Did you spend all of it?" No need to ask what she'd spent it on. The glassy eyes gave her away.

"There's… a little left…"

He snatched up her purse, rifled through it for the remaining cash. Just a few twenties.

"I'll be at the track. Don't wait up."

"But… it's Christmas Eve. Our anniversary—"

O'Riordan slammed the door on her before he had to listen to any more of her shite.

***  
 _Got on a Lucky One_

It wasn't a far walk from the police station to the pub, but Jimmy Doyle tried to refuse payout, tried to claim there was some kind of time limit on O'Riordan's claim.

That lasted only long enough for O'Riordan to hoist Jimmy up by his lapels and drag him out into the street. Half the patrons followed, less interested in answering Jimmy's pleas for help than they were in placing bets on who'd win the tussle.

O'Riordan was the odds-on favorite.

"You'll pay up, you cheap bastard, unless you want to be tasting curb." O'Riordan pushed the bookie back into the wall, kicked him down when he would have tried to scurry away. Jimmy crumpled, arms clasped around his stomach, face red, and eyes bugging. His dyed combover flapped in the cold winter wind blowing down the street.

"All right, all right with you. Just let me see that ticket again."

O'Riordan held to it firmly as he presented it, not trusting the old bookie.

Doyle nodded. When it seemed the fight was over, the crowd dispersed back into the warmth of the pub. Money changed hands and backs were slapped in congratulation or commiseration, depending which way the winnings flowed.

"My mistake, my mistake. Just let me get your take. " Jimmy led the way back inside. Rifled through his lockbox. "Eighteen-to-one. Gonna be a happy Christmas for you and the missus, isn't it though?"

O'Riordan fought back jitters as Doyle paid out. Counted the money twice, hiding it when he realized several hungry stares bore into his back.

"Don't spend it all in one place." Doyle flattened down his combover. "Unless you want to bet it on tomorrow's heats…?"

O'Riordan turned without answering, because he wasn't sure he could say no. He left the bar and headed for the pawn shop, head down, hands dug deep into his coat pockets, fist clenched around the wad of cash.

Not all in one place. There'd be plenty left to spare to get Cait cleaned up, buy her a pretty frock. And more than enough to recover what had been lost.

***

  
_I Built My Dreams Around You_   


"Cait! I've got it, love. We're saved." O'Riordan pushed on the door. Something blocked it. She'd probably pushed the mattress against it, or the bureau. She did that when she was fashed with him.

He leaned against the frame and spoke through the crack. "I'm sorry for earlier, babe. Sorry for coming back so late. But I got the guitar. Your guitar. For luck." And nevermind that the pawn broker had charged O'Riordan extra for making him open the shop back up on Christmas Eve.

O'Riordan pushed harder on the door. Whatever blocked it rolled aside with a muffled thump. Too solid to be the mattress. Too small as well.

"No. Christ fucking no." He shoved the door open. Cait rolled across the floor. The guitar twanged a discordant note as he dropped it, dropped to his knees beside Cait's limp, boneless sprawl. Her eyes, no longer glassy, stared past him to the cracked ceiling. He took her hand, tried to wrap her fingers around the neck of her guitar.

Nothing. Not a twitch. She'd never play again.

O'Riordan knelt there for he knew not how long, door open, room growing colder as the heat escaped. Cait's hand in his grew colder as well.

The bells of St. Barnabas jarred him to action. Christmas Day. Cait's hand thunked against the floor when he dropped it to pick up the guitar. He didn't have her voice. Only knew a few chords that she'd taught him back in better days. But he was Irish, a son of Yeats, and didn't that mean he had some sort of poetry running through him?

Fuck everyone if he didn't. He knew of only one way to give her the immortality she'd always sought. He strummed a chord.

"It was Christmas Eve in the drunk tank…"

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the excellent Russian_Blue for beta-reading.
> 
> Sources:  
> "'Oh, Dem Golden Slippers': The Philadelphia Mummers Parade," by Charles E. Welch, Jr., in The Journal of American Folklore. 79:314. Oct.-Dec. 1966.
> 
> All Silver and No Brass: An Irish Christmas Mumming, by Henry Glassie. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia. 1983.
> 
> "Fairytale of New York," by The Pogues, feat. Kirsty MacColl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv0hlbWpa1w
> 
> Author Notes:
> 
> Halfway through the writing of the first (scrapped) draft of this story, I realized I was nowhere near punk enough to do justice to the tale in my head. I tried anyways, and after many viewings of Trainspotting to get in the mood, I hope I've hit somewhere near the mark.
> 
> I also hope this story doesn't depress you too much on Christmas. This really is a happy story. Sort of. As happy as I think it can be.
> 
> Note: There is no Christmas Mummers Parade in New York City, as far as I could find.


End file.
